On April 1, around 9:15 a.m., Michael Cooper’s phone rang with the news that he finally had been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
He was sitting next to his wife, Yvonne, both of them listening. Yet as he heard the words being delivered about one of the highest honors in basketball, Cooper had his doubts.
His former Lakers teammate Magic Johnson had been lobbying for years to get Cooper into the Hall of Fame and it had never happened. When he first heard the news, Cooper thought why should he believe it was true this time?